National Finals

Santa Pod Raceway

23rd – 25th September 2016

A little disappointed, but a fantastic winning year !

We arrived at Santa Pod on Friday and set up the pit and awning, we scrutineerd the car and then had a relaxing time before the event started with 3 qualifying runs on Saturday.

The UK Championship was very close with any one of the first 5 competitors in with a chance of taking the UK National Championship crown; Brad was lying in 2nd place and we were hopeful of a great event.
The first round I dialled a 7.76 and Brad ran a 7.80, 4 hundredths of a second off the dial in, this time placed Brad in 5th position so was a great start to the day.

The second round I dialled a 7.79 and Brad ran a 7.82, 3 hundredths of a second off the dial in, although this was a slight improvement due to the others improving this dropped us to 7th.

The third and final qualifier was crucial especially for the qualifying points, I dialled a 7.81 to try and get us nearer the top.

Brad came round and did a burnout, I felt the sun had been on the track and my instinct told me we were going to run quicker so just before I took Brad to the line I changed our dial in to 7.79, Brad ran 7.795 a great result, 5 thousandths of a second over the dial in put us in 3rd place. The car and Brad were performing well so we looked forward to the eliminations on Sunday morning.

Sunday morning brought a little rain shower so the start was delayed by about an hour. The first round of eliminations made interesting reading, Billy Gane (No 1 in the championship ) against Scott Hauser (No 3 in the championship) and Brad ( No 2 in the championship ) against Ian Powell ( no 4 in the championship) if you were a betting man then you would have got some very long odds against that happening ! Chris Parker (No 5 in the championship) had a bye run due to being No1 qualifier.

Scott beat Billy and Ian beat Brad, this now meant that Scott only had to go 2 rounds of eliminations to be champion for the 3rd time.

Ian Powell dialled 8.13 and ran 8.131, with a reaction time of 0.04 was a clear winner, it is a little strange when we talk in these numbers that Brad’s package was 0.0241, 2 hundredths of a second off our prediction and Ian’s package was 0.0017, 17 thousandths of a second of his prediction that we say Ian had an easy win by 0.1465 of a second.

Scott, Ian and Chris all went through the next round so one more round and Scott would be champion, in the next round Scott unfortunately broke out by 5 thousandths of a second so now the first 3 coming into the event had all been eliminated !

Natalie was treated by Nick and Wayne to a passenger ride in the 2 seated dragster, her ride resulted in a run of 7.88 seconds at 168 mph, Natalie now has the bug and would like to drive a dragster!

We would like to thank all of our sponsors and supporters for their help, Bradjacksonracing.com couldn’t have had this level of success in the hardest class in Europe without your help!

Well Done Nick Good Motorsport!

Ian and Chris both went all the way and met in the final, the maths were simple, win the meeting, win the UK Championship, who would it be?
The winner was Chris Parker! Ian unfortunately red lit and cost himself a chance of the being the champion!
Congratulations to Chris on taking the championship, Chris drives another of our teams dragsters so well done Nick good Motorsport!

We would like to thank our wonderful crew, Nick Good, Christiann Carlo, Natalie Cooper and of course Alison, Brad’s mum, who has kept us all wonderfully fed throughout the season!

Although we feel a little disappointed today we gave it a really good shot and Brad has had a fantastic year winning the Open Sports Nationals and retaining his APIRA Super Pro Championship title for the second year in a row.

He also won the FIA European Finals meeting at Santa Pod, this is the highlight of the year for Brad, he had been runner up in this event in his junior dragster in 2010 when he was just 14 and red lit, so he has always wanted to win this event and lay that ghost to rest !

We are already planning our assault on the championship in 2017 and we will be presenting the car in a new livery at the Autosport International Motor Show in January so why not drop by and say hello?

FIA / FIM European Championships Finals

Santa Pod Raceway

8th – 11th September 2016

“Brad wins again”

We arrived at Santa Pod late on Wednesday night due to Brad’s work commitments so it was an early start on Thursday morning with Qualifying 1 due at 0930. Brad and Wayne were up at 6.30 to get signed on and the car scrutineered and back in the pits to get the car ready for Q1.

There were 39 cars entered for a 32 car field and this event attracts the best racers from many European countries so we were aware of how close qualifying would be. We started with a solid tenth of a second of dial in and this got us into the field at no 12, the next round we didn’t improve and had slipped to 20th and were conscious this was going to be a tough day.

The 3rd session Wayne dialed a 7.78 and we ran a 7.7867, 6 thousands of a second off the dial in put us in the field at number 7, over the next 4 sessions through Thursday and Friday we came close to improving, 7 thousands over and 3 thousands under the dial in but 6 thousands found us in 8th place, we were very happy with this position.

Incredibly a new record was set for the class with the first 13 places under 1 hundredth of a second, the previous best had been 8 !!

Saturday brought heavy rain and even though the track crew tried to dry the track after the rain had ceased by the afternoon, they couldn’t dry the shut down area so the track crew call the meeting for the day.

Sunday was a beautiful sunny day (all day) we went straight into eliminations, this was going to be a little tricky with not running the car for 2 days, but all the other teams were in the same situation. Our first round opponent was Mo Blackburn, a very experienced Super Pro racer, Wayne dialled a 7.75 and the car ran 7.77, Brad’s 0.02 of a second reaction time was a big factor in Brad taking the win.

We would like to thank all crew, especially Natalie Cooper who helped me (Wayne) service the car many times this weekend in quick succession, great work Nick Good and Cristiann Carlo and Alison for keeping the crew fed all weekend !

In round 2 Brad was drawn against Bernard Saz , Bernard’s team are from Andorra and put a huge effort into coming from the mountains between Spain and France to race at Santa Pod. Bernard has finally got his car running low 7 seconds and consistent, Brad cut another 0.02 light to Bernard’s 0.29 light so Brad took the win.

The next round Brad was facing Scott Hauser, Scott is currently the most successful driver in Super Pro with 2 championships in the last 3 years and multiple event wins, Scott’s father Geof Hauser is also one of the UK’s drag racing pioneers and has been in the sport since its inception in the 1960’s. Hauser race cars also build some of the very best cars in Europe.

The last time Brad and Scott met Brad red lit gifting the race to Scott, Brad was determined not to go red again! Brad pulled a 0.009 light to Scott’s 0.1014 light so the chasing Scott never caught Brad and also broke out in his effort to catch Brad, Brad loved this win and found it very satisfying after the pressure he had been under before this match up.

So we were in the semi-finals! Brad’s next race was with Pete Walters, another ex Junior Dragster Driver, and both Pete and Brad had been waiting for this match for a while! Brad once again took the advantage with a 0.0861 reaction to Pete’s 0.1363 but Pete’s car threw a con rod just before the stripe and Brad was in the Final!

Brad had made the European Final in Junior Dragster but red lit and lost; Brad has always felt that this was one that he gave away so was even more determined than usual that he wouldn’t make the same mistake.

The final was against Tom Atkinson, another very good and very clever racer, Brad and Wayne discussed at length what tactic to use with the dial in and a plan was in place, Brad cut another fantastic light, 0.044 to Tom’s 0.178 so Brad just had to make sure he didn’t breakout, Brad didn’t and now had won the event!

The win was sweet; Brad had won the most prestigious event we race at! Brad had also won the previous meeting, The Open Sports National, so two wins in a row has put Brad in a position where he can win the UK National championship at Santa Pod in 2 weeks time, the anticipation is already beginning to build with 5 drivers mathematically in with a chance of winning the championship, we are waiting for the results to be ratified but the Euro’s win has elevated Brad into second place in the championship so it’s going to be a really exciting weekend at the National Finals.

Brad also had a surprise on Friday when Liz, Brads girlfriend, had arranged for her and 4 of Brads friends to come to Santa Pod for their first look at Drag Racing, needless to say they had a fantastic weekend and really felt involved in the event and felt the excitement that our “winner and loser” every round sport delivers !

Bring on the National Finals at Santa Pod on the 24th-25th September!

Open Sports Nationals 27th – 29th August 2016

Shakespeare County Raceway

Stratford upon Avon

Champion Again!!

After the long summer break Alison and I set off for Stratford in the RV and Brad was coming down later due to College commitments in Milton Keynes, Brad loves driving his pride & joy , his classic MX5, so was quite happy to join us later.

Last year Brad had won the APIRA championship but we were a lowly 6th in the championship and needed some of the contenders above us to exit early and Brad to win the meeting to have any chance of retaining his title.

The crew had worked on the car during the break and had changed the torque convertor in an effort to increase the cars consistency so we were eagerly waiting to see how the car would perform. We had also fitted a cross brace in the chassis to improve the car’s stability so the teams expectations’ were high.

Our first qualifying session went well and Brad was in 7th position, unfortunately it then rained and we didn’t get any further runs in on the day. We had the company of Lucas Oil UK’s MD Les Downey and his wife Mo with us for the weekend and Les kept us laughing (as always) with his wit and anecdotes

After studying the data we changed the launch chip and looked forward to Sunday, Sunday was a great day with really good weather, we had 5 qualifying runs, and Brad reported that the car was running “strong & straight”, we had a great day and Brad finished the day in 11th place.

Monday was again a great day with the weather being hot and sunny,

In the 1st round we were drawn against Jack Brewster, an ex Super Pro champion, Jack red lit and gifted us an easy win on what would have been a tough race, Jack was also one of the competitors in front of Brad and also Ian Powell went out in round 1, another competitor in front of Brad in the championship, so this helped Brad’s cause.

I would like say a huge thank you to Nick Good and Cristiann Carlo for their dedication in preparing a great car !!

Round 2 we were drawn against Pete Walters but unfortunately Pete had holed a piston so was a no show, we had an easy round, but hey, you have to take them especially after the bad luck the team has had this year!

The championship now looked a real possibility with Chris Parker leading and Rick Cook in front of Brad on points, Brad drew Rick Cook in the semi finals, Chris Parker was racing Bob Doyle.

In the semi’s Brad beat Rick Cook and Chris Parker red lit leaving the final between Brad and Bob Doyle, a quick calculation showed if Brad won the meeting he would also be the APIRA champion for the second time, if Bob won then Chris Parker would take the championship and Brad would be runner up!

Brad and I had a discussion and we decided on our dial in together. Brad cut a great 0.04 light to Bob’s 0.13 so Brad had the edge and drove a great race to take the win!

The calculations show that Brad winning the event had taken the championship by just 80 point’s, less than a round win!

So Brad Jackson Racing love “Shakey” with 2014 runner up spot in the championship and 2015 & 2016 winning the championship, this is now a track the team really have a handle on !

We had a great weekend with Les and Mo, and it was great to see them both enjoy a race meeting in a quieter venue where Les was able to relax and just be part of the team for the weekend.

We would like to thank Nick Good and Cristiann Carlo for their dedication in preparing a great car for Brad, and of course a big thank you to all our sponsors, we couldn’t do it without your support!

This picture shows the champion leaving the track in his pride and joy heading for College Milton Keynes for the rest of the week!

We are now looking forward to the European Finals at Santa Pod in 2 weeks time!

We were looking forward to the Summer Nationals, Brad had had 3 recent big slides in the car so we had taken the car to Hauser race cars for an additional cross brace welding in the chassis to see if this eliminated the loss of traction Brad had been experiencing.

We decided to test the car before the event so we headed to Santa Pod on Thursday night so we could get a full days testing Friday, we set up the awning and equipment and then we were ready to test the car, we also had Brad’s girlfriend Lizz standing in for Natalie as Brad’s back up girl so Lizz was a little bit nervous at first but took to her role really well.

Brad’s first run went very well and Brad reported that the car felt fine and ran down the track feeling a lot smoother, we did however find our recurring engine problem had returned, the data showed we had a poor cylinder on number 8 so Nick and Cristiann reset the injection system. Unfortunately it then decided to rain and it continued to rain all day so that was the extent of our test day.

Saturday morning brought qualifying and in round 1 Brad ran an 8.02 on a 7.70 dial so we knew we still had the gremlins! Again Nick and Cristiann work tirelessly to find a solution and after more adjustments we were ready for the 2nd round of qualifying.

We ran a 7.88 on a 7.70 dial so with the car still not quite right had to settle for 12th place from 19 qualifiers due to a rain shower earlier in the day causing us to run out of time with the noise curfew coming into play.
Sunday morning brought the first round of eliminations, we were still not sure if we had fixed the car and Wayne dialled a 7.78 to give Brad a chance to chase down the very experienced Tom Atkinson , the number 3 qualifier, this tactic worked and Brad took the win against the breakout time of Tom’s.

Brad reported the car the felt fine and the data showed that the car was now back on form.

Wayne was now able to dial a time that we knew the car would run, in the second round of eliminations Brad had his old junior dragster adversary Joe Kellett, Wayne dialled a 7.76 and the car ran a 7.77 but Brad had an uncharacteristic red light and we were out.

Brad was very disappointed with the red light but this is only the second red light he has pulled in competition in the last 3 years of racing so the team told Brad not to beat himself up about it.

We take some positives from the weekend that the car handles a lot better with the cross brace and the fact that we hopefully have eliminated the fuelling gremlins that we have had this year!

We now break for the summer but are already looking forward to the next meeting, the Open Sports Nationals at Shakespeare county raceway on the holiday weekend at the end of August, the car is ready,

Brad is ready and the team are ready!

Bring it on!

Santa Pod Video

See If you can Spot Us !!

We eagerly awaited this event following a poor start to the season, this event attracts racers from all over Europe and it is a meeting that Brad really enjoys. The weather forecast was great and it looked like we would have a full weekend of action.
We had some guests for the event and we also had 2 sponsors at the event, Les Downey and his wife Mo from Lucas Oil UK , and Keith West from Pentagon.
We arrived on Thursday and set up the pits, we had 3 Lucas Oil dragsters competing this weekend so it was going to be busy because all 3 dragsters were in the same class.
Friday qualifying showed us that we has 6 rounds of qualifying so we would get plenty of track time, our first run Wayne dialled 7.72 but Brad ran a 7.707 breaking out by just over 100th of a second, the second run the car ran slower, the data didn’t show anything wrong so we changed the fuel ratio, the third run was even slower so we realised we had a problem. We checked the car over and couldn’t find anything untoward so took the rocker covers off and found two tight rockers, we made a decision not to run the car but due to our other 2 cars qualifying, Nick Good and Chris Parker, the crew were busy servicing these cars.

At around 4pm we decided to investigate further, this resulted in the cylinder heads and the sump being removed and we found 2 pistons had broken rings. I went to see Goef Hauser from Hauser Race Cars, http://www.hauserracing.com , and Geof kindly offered to open his workshop for us, this is a great gesture for 2 reasons, we race against his son Scott and secondly it was already 7pm,

What a great sportsman and a great gentleman!

I got the parts back for the crew and Nick and Cristiann worked until the small hours getting the engine rebuilt, they finished about 0130 but due to the noise curfew we had to wait until 9 o’clock the following day before we could try the engine.
The next morning the engine ran perfectly and although we were on the back foot and in last place we thought we would be able to recover the situation. We were wrong, the car launched really well but then wouldn’t shift into 2nd gear, Brad aborted this run, back at the pit’s we found a wire has come loose on the shifter solenoid, not related at all to the engine problem just a real piece of bad luck. There was then a huge accident in Pro Mod which resulted in a 2 hour delay, pleased to say the driver wasn’t too badly injured, but again our day was done.
Here’s the video;-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqLlAY2-3lc

Sunday we realised we would only get 1 more qualifying chance, with no data yet Wayne had to take an educated guess and his stab was almost 2 tenths of a second over his dial in and this was only good enough for 28th place in the 32 car field, but at least the car was fine and we were in the show.
A little later in the day brought the first round of eliminations and we were against Wouter van Leersom from the Nederlands, this is where our weekend improved, he had some trouble and Brad was through the first round of eliminations.
Round 2 brought a little irony that we were drawn against team mate Nick Good, Nick prepares our car and this would be an interesting race, Nicks car is a blown alcohol car and reaches over 200mph in 6 seconds, however Nick still knew he needed a good light against Brad and tried too hard and red lit gifting the win to Brad! Our joy was short lived when we saw that Brad now had an oil leak that would be tricky to repair. Nick and Cristiann again worked hard to repair the car for Brad and once again we looked forward to the quarter finals.
Monday we woke up to a slight bit of moisture in the air, the track was dry and Santa Pod ran the pro cars first, our race took place around 1pm, Brad holeshot Ian Powell with a 0.053 reaction to Ian’s 0.105 giving Brad the advantage when the car lost traction and swerved to the right, Brad fought the car valiantly but had to lift gifting the race to Ian, congratulations to Ian. There is a short video on my (Wayne Jackson) timeline on facebook, if you look closely you can just see Brad getting out of shape as the video ends.

Summary, Nick always delivers Brad a great car but this weekend it decided to test our commitment, it lost!
We never give in until it’s over, and for Brad to reach the last 8 in this competitive FIA event was a great result for the team and keeps our championship aspirations alive!

We arrived at Shakespeare County Raceway with a little apprehension following the car trouble we experienced at the Festival of Power, Nick and Cristiann had checked the whole car and found a swollen “O” ring in the injection system and also a couple of a new set of spark plugs were a little bit weak.

The crew were confident that the car was back to normal but due to my work commitments we hadn’t had time to test the car.

Brad won this event last year so we were confident of a strong result and looking forward to qualifying, the car sounded strong and on the first burnout we could tell the car was fixed.

The track was cold and had been wet, Brad lost traction at mid track but still ran 8.34 @ 165 mph with 1.1 seconds to 60 foot we knew the car was back on form, Brad also pulled an 0.04 second reaction time so the team were buoyant.

Brad’s best run was a 7.82 on a 7.77 dial in so 5 hundredths of a second off the dial in was good enough for 5th place.

Monday’s 1st round of eliminations we were racing Joe Stevens, a real tough opponent, especially at his home track, Brad overcame Joe to take the first round win.

Round 2 of eliminations we faced Jack Brewster, Brad had lane choice and we took the left lane, Brad pulled a great 0.02 light but at 330 ft the car turned sharp right, here’s the quote from journalist Tog from Eurodragster.com ;-

Good driving job by Brad Jackson in his race against Jack Brewster, the Lucas Oil dragster made a hard right about 300 feet out but Brad kept a hold of it.

Brad had to correct the car and made a valiant attempt to catch Jack but although he still ran a 9.02 @ 161 mph Jack took the win.

We were eliminated, but we were thankful that Brad did a fantastic driving job having his biggest “moment” of his 6 year career and brought him and the car home safely.

Brad stands 7th in the National championship but only 500 points adrift from championship leader and team mate Chris Parker, a result that we will take considering the outcome could have been a lot worse.

The next event is the FIA Main Event at Santa Pod and the Super Pro entry is already at 39 entries with the very best in Europe attending the event, we eagerly await this event!

Autosport International, The Racing Car show

Brad Jackson Racing had Brad’s car on display at the NEC 14th-17th January 2016. Lucas Oil had teamed up with Santa Pod Raceway and shared a stand which worked out really well with both parties gaining lots of crossover between product and display.

It was a really positive event, the response the general public had to Brad’s car with many people saying that they knew what a Dragster was but had never seen one in “real life”, many people were really impressed with the look and quality of the dragster and they particularly liked the statistics of 0-60 mph in 0.87 of a second and 0-175 mph in 7.6 seconds.

Brad’s race suit sponsor’s HRX are from Italy, Ago Alberghino, HRX’s owner had never seen a dragster before and want us to take the car to Turin in October for a motor show, we will keep you posted on that, I’m just trying to arrange the transport logistics of the trip at the moment!
Torq racewear, HRX’s UK distributor are just working on some custom underwear and some custom gloves for Brad, HRX have a new range of gloves which can be personalised at a reasonable cost, checkout the website at http://torq-racewear.com

We are now busy preparing the car for the new season with a new wrap and team wear to be announced soon when the final design is agreed upon ! Watch this space for news.

UK Drag Racing National Finals Santa Pod 19th - 20th September 2015

We arrived at Santa Pod with high hopes for the weekend, the weather forecast was really good for the last meeting of the season with sunshine and no rain forecast for the whole event.

The championship was very close with Simon Gough on 3010 points, Brad on 2990, Scott Hauser 2720, Ian Powell 2690 and Rick Cook on 2330, all of these drivers in reach of winning this close battle for the title, and with 1010 points available it was going to be exciting !

First qualifying run we dialled 7.72 and ran a breakout 7.708 and started the day in 17th place. Brad’s second run was an identical 7.708 and this moved Brad up to 11th.

The weather changed for the third and final run so I dialled a 7.68 and the car ran another 7.70 but with a 4 this time, the first three contenders were very close in qualifying with them all qualifying within 70 points of each other, this still made it a whoever went the most rounds would win the title, and I guess the car was telling me what to dial in eliminations 1 on Sunday.

Sunday morning we found that our E1 competitor, Steve Kellett had an engine issue so they pulled out of the race to prevent any damage. This is not the way we wanted to progress but it made our first round more comfortable.

We were called to the start line, Brad started the car and there wasn’t any oil pressure !

We shut the car off and made the decision to tow the car to the start and then just start the car on tick over and break the beams for the run, this is what we did and towed the car back to the pits, but with only 1.5 hours before eliminations 2 the pressure was on to find and fix the issue. Nick Good and Cristiann Carlo stripped the engine to find that the plunger had stuck in the oil pump. This was a real shock to the team because Nick and Cristiann always prepared our car to the highest standards. The guys put the car back together and we just started the car and had oil pressure when we were called for eliminations 2, an absolutely fantastic job by the team!

We were very nervous what to dial because we hadn’t any data for Sunday but the weather was very similar to Saturday so Brad wanted a 7.70 but with low air density I wanted 7.68, Brad won the discussion and we dialled 7.70 but we ran a 7.78 and lost the race to Dan Giles by 0.009, this was the closest race of the day and 9 thousands of a second equated to 27.59 inches at 175 mph !

So we were out, we knew that if we had gone only one more round Brad could have either won or finished runner up, we waited for the class to finish and both Ian Powell and Scott Hauser were also eliminated, this made for a nervous wait to see what Rick Cook and Simon Gough would do.

Eliminations 3 saw Dan Giles knock out Simon Gough so we had to wait and see what Rick Cook would do! This was a repeat of last year when Rick just passed Brad in this meeting in 2014 to demote Brad to third, Rick carried and went all the way to the final, the maths were simple, if Rick won were demoted to third (again !), Dan Giles had a different idea and beat Rick to secure his first Super Pro victory so a big congratulations to Dan on his first win !

This meant Brad was second in the National UK championship, this was a great result for the team, 2014 was Brad’s first year in Super Pro and he finished 3rd, 2015 brought the runner up spot ! this is a great achievement in the toughest sportsman class in Europe.

The whole team a have made this possible but the effort that Nick and Cristiann put into the engine work made this dream a reality!

I would like to thank Nick Good and Cristiann Carlo for their mechanical knowledge, Natalie Cooper our back up girl, and Dave Catton for the occasional verbal input he enthuses and the loan of the tow car! Of course I must mention what a great job by Brad with many 0.0- reaction times and great skill as a young driver,I must also give myself a pat on the back for my (mostly ) dial in times, a job I have found fairly stressful in our ever changing climate !

I would like to say a big thank you to all our sponsors, Lucas Oil both in the UK and the USA, Pentagon Corporate Fleet, D & S signs, Martin Williams Hull, Torq/HRX Race wear, our associates Pete Walters race design last but not least Six B Apparel in the USA.